Monday, June 29, 2009

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of enjoying Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance: A Slave to Duty*.

In Act II, came this great song. Given the wit and vinegar of Chicago's Law Enforcement Professionals, I am sure a parody fitting the Age and Morals of Chicago 2009 will grace the lyrics. I have rarely met people more well-read, insightful, good-humored, tolerant or braver than CPD members.

Sergeant. When a felon's not engaged in his employment – Police. His employment, Sergeant. Or maturing his felonious little plans – Police. Little plans, Sergeant. His capacity for innocent enjoyment – Police. 'Cent enjoyment Sergeant. Is just as great as any honest man's – Police. Honest man's.

Sergeant. Our feelings we with difficulty smother – Police. 'Culty smother, Sergeant. When constabulary duty's to be done – Police. To be done. Sergeant. Ah, take one consideration with another – Police. With another, Sergeant. A policeman's lot is not a happy one. Police. Ah! Sergeant & Police. When constabulary duty's to be done, to be done,A policeman's lot is not a happy one, happy one.

Sergeant. When the enterprising burglar's not a-burgling – Police. Not a-burgling. Sergeant. When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime – Police. 'Pied in crime, Sergeant. He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling – Police. Brook a-gurgling, Sergeant. And listen to the merry village chime – Police. Village chime.

Sergeant. When the coster's finished jumping on his mother – Police. On his mother, Sergeant. He loves to lie a-basking in the sun – Police. In the sun. Sergeant. Ah, take one consideration with another – Police. With another, Sergeant. A policeman's lot is not a happy one. Police. Ah!

Sergeant & Police. When constabulary duty's to be done, to be done,A policeman's lot is not a happy one, happy one.

Click my post title for the melody and inflection.

God Bless Chicago Cops - He'd better.

*

After the sensational success of H.M.S. Pinafore, many American performing companies presented unauthorized versions of that opera. Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte decided to prevent that from happening again by presenting official versions of their next opera, The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty simultaneously in England and America. The opera premiered on December 31, 1879 at the Fifth Avenue Theater in New York with Sullivan conducting, but a single performance had been given on the previous day at the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton, England, to secure the British copyright. Finally, the opera opened on April 3, 1880, at the Opéra Comique in London, where it ran for 363 performances, having already been playing successfully for over three months in New York.

On December 10, 1879, Sullivan had written a letter to his mother about the new opera, upon which he was hard at work in New York. "I think it will be a great success, for it is exquisitely funny, and the music is strikingly tuneful and catching." True enough! The Pirates of Penzance was an immediate hit and takes its place today as one of the most popular and enduring works of musical theatre.

In The Pirates of Penzance, Frederic was as a child apprenticed to a band of tenderhearted, orphaned pirates by his nurse who, being hard of hearing, had mistaken her master's instructions to apprentice the boy to a pilot. Frederic, upon completing his 21st year, rejoices that he has fulfilled his indentures and is now free to return to respectable society. But it turns out that he was born on February 29 in leap year, and he remains apprenticed to the pirates until his 21st birthday. By the end of the opera, the pirates, a Major General who knows nothing of military strategy, his large family of beautiful but unwed daugters, and the timid constabulary all contribute to a cacophony that can be silenced only by Queen Victoria's name.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

BBC World Service- Veteran politician Rev Jesse Jackson, who has been counselling the Jackson family, said the behaviour of Michael Jackson's doctor needs to be explained. Click my post title for the video.

"Love Laughs at a King, Kings don't need no Bling on the Street of Dreams! Gold, Silver and Gold -all that you can hold - on a moon beam. Joe,I''ll accept that bauble - for starters. As that Dead White man said,"For within the hollow crown/That rounds the mortal temple of a king,/Keeps death his court, and there the antic sits,Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,/. . . . . . And humored thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin/Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! No King; No Bling! No Bling; No Thing!"

Rev. Jesse Jackson, from left, and his son Yusef DuBois Jackson, speak with Joe Jackson, father of the late pop star Michael Jackson, outside the Jackson family home in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles on Friday, June 26, 2009. AP Photo

The ripest fruit first falls - Richard II- Act II, Sc. I

In an act of solidarity the Family Jackson covers the loss like a Prudential Gold Plan. Rev. Jesse L. Jackson was hot to issue a call for a second "independent" autopsy on the mortal husk of Michael Jackson. He might just blanket the Gary Jacksons with Jackson Universal!

Rev. Jackson might orate"

"From Jackson Hole to Jackson Mississipi; From Jackson Street to Jackson Browne; Jackson be Jackson to Jackson and My Son to Your Son; from Yousef To Your Self -We Are all of us Jackson, until Jackson's Jack JacksAll Jacksons onto Some Jack and until We are all Jack City, then there be Jackson! . . .Solid Jackson!. . . I'll take the Questions of the Press as well!"

Be it known - while I view the Rev. Jackson with a squinty gimlet eye, a reknowned Chicago attorney and friend to both the Rev. Jesse Jackson and this cynical helot offered this assesment. ( Please note!)

Anyway, something you may not know is Rev. Jackson was like a surrogate father to MJ. They loved each other dearly. I witnessed it.

Eight years ago today, America lost Mortimer Adler. Mortimer Adler* challenged the world to lead a happy life based upon some understanding of the Great Ideas passed on to all of us through the history of human thought.

εὐδαιμονία -EuDaimonia ( which I can never, ever pronounce correctly) comes from two Greek words: Eu -Good,or well-being and Daimon - a person's total spirit or place in the world.

This weekend, the world snoops into the death of Michael Jackson, a terminally unhappy fifty year old pop-singer from Gary, Indiana. The late Mr. Jackson's ability to garner 98% of all news coverage is miraculous. MSNBC will report on the white smoke billowing from Neverland, or whatever Jackson Family compound not under receivership, when a new King of Pop is elected. Mortimer Adler was happy man. He was surrounded by the good works of life -in theory,output and practice.

Leading a happy life is hard work. There are no 'Atta-Boy's' for doing your job, being a good and decent citizen, loving,caring and providing for your children, living up to your obligations and making a difference while your walk on this earth.

We mistake 'enjoyment' for happiness. Michael Jackson and the attention his very unhappy life exuded is testimony to just that.

Mortimer Adler welded the Testaments of our Western Culture - he was born Jewish and died with the last rites of Roman Catholic Church. What brought Mr. Adler to the New Testament seems to have been his life-long study of a Pagan -Aristotle. From Aristotle, Adler employed the Jewish scholar Maimonides and Muslim Averroes to understand St. Thomas Aquinas. Adler was the greatest Aquinas Scholar of our time.

Rolling through the ages of thought, Adler dismissed the radical Hegelian paganism of the 19th Century, which is the basis for Progressive thought in America, forged by John Dewey and bowdlerized by political activists and tin-horn academics.

This Hegelian nonsense dismisses piety and humility in thought. It makes the individual God - it is what Bertrand Russell (an atheist by the way) called our 'Cosmic Impiety).

Respect for the gods, God, Great Ideas and better persons than ourselves is piety. Not a mealy-mouthed, pharisaic bead rattling show-off, but a person dedicated to qualities of virtue and obligation. Respect in America is as disposable as a plastic razor bought at Dollar Bill's.

Piety, which teaches how to respect ourselves, is what allows a person to be 'happy' - piety, virtue and dignity are what gives a person Authority; not alphabets after your name, scoops of cash, or the most toys, or the most ink.

Mortimer Adler reminded us that humility leads to authority.

Here are two American authorities on Mortimer J. Adler - in testimonies to Adler's welding of Man's Testament with God, given at his funeral service in St. Chrysostom Church in 2001.

RemembrancesCharles Van Doren

I met Mortimer for the first time more than seventy-fiveyears ago. I know the place and date exactly: Lennox HillHospital, New York City, February 14, 1926. Mortimerwas a little over twenty-five years old. I was two—two days,that is. My father and Mortimer were colleagues at Columbia,leading a great-books seminar together. Dad hadbrought Mortimer to see his first born, and Mortimer entertained me by neologizing. To neologize is to speak employingwords that you make up as you go along. Themeaning is not important; it is the sound that counts. Iloved the sound of Mortimer’s voice then, and I neverceased to do so. At that time he spoke too fast for mostpeople to understand him, unless they paid very special attention,which many people do not like to have to do.Later, he slowed down and spoke in short, simple, directsentences—and wrote them too. The mellifluousness thathad charmed me as a two-day-old then began to charmeveryone else. What a speaker he was. You never had anydoubt what he was saying. But, if you disagreed, it was becauseyou did not quite understand. This was also true ofhis books. With a single exception, every book that hewrote after his sixtieth birthday was distinct and clear, itslanguage perfectly conformed to its meaning. As a reward,almost every book was a best seller (comparatively speaking,no bodice ripper he).And what a teacher, too. In his autobiography, he wroteabout what he had learned from my father about leading aseminar. And in every one of the more than two hundredseminars Mortimer and I led together over thirty years inChicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and other places, Ialways learned something important about something important—as his friend Arthur Ruben used to say.When I was a child, Mortimer astounded and fascinatedme. He would visit us, whenever he came to New York onbusiness—always with an agenda in hand of items to discuss.I thought that was astonishing. We visited him atStone Pond in New Hampshire, and I was again astonished,to see him happily splashing about with water wingsabove his head, like Mickey Mouse ears. He never sneezedjust once, always three times, never more, never less. Andwhen I learned about his work with the Hayes Office,which among other things ordained that a movie actresscould not show her legs more than a few inches above theknee, and especially not the inside of her thighs, I was kerflummoxed.(That’s not a neologism.) Since the inside of awoman’s thigh was at time (I was thirteen) a matter ofenormous interest, I envied Mortimer. I imagined that hehad to check out all those beautiful thighs and make surethey were not breaking the rules.And then there came the time when I fell down, face downin the mud, and he picked me up, brushed me off, and gaveme a job. It was the best kind of job: as he described it, oneyou would do anyway, if you did not need the money. AndI did it for thirty years. First we worked together makingbooks for Encyclopædia Britannica. Then I, and many others,helped him to design and edit the greatest encyclopediathe world has ever seen. It has fallen on bad days, but itwill rise again and outlive us all—just as Mortimer’s philosophicalwork will do.I remember the first seminar we led together, nearly fortyyears ago. The text was Plato’s dialogue, The Sophist. I hadread it twice or three times and struggled to get the point. Itcould not be what it seemed to be. But Mortimer helped usall to understand it was. The true sophist, Plato is saying,cannot be trapped—if he is willing to say anything whatsoeverto win the argument. If he wants to win at all costsand does not care what is true, and if he is adept at fendingoff the truth when it is presented, the sophist will triumph,and you will fail. I asked Mortimer after the seminarwhether he agreed. “Yes,” he said, surprisingly, “Plato isright.” But he believed (and I do to) that this is the tragedyof intellect. In other words, truth must be fought for, eventhough one may not be able to win. Mortimer fought forthe truth all of his life, although he believed in the end thathe had been defeated. We tried to persuade him that thiswas not so, but we failed. Time, merciless and remorseless,betrayed him—as eventually it betrays us all.And now, having said that, I want to praise him. As anotherman, a great general, praised another philosopher,long ago. The general compared that other philosopher to asatyr. (And, indeed, there was a certain rotundity of bodyand an amused, ironic look on Mortimer’s face most of the4ime.) That general said that that other philosopher was likeMarsyas, the great flute player who challenged Apollo, andwhose melodies charmed all who heard them. But the generalsaid that this philosopher produced the same effectwith his words only, and did not require a flute. “When wehear any other speaker,” the general said, addressing hisfriend, “His words produce absolutely no effect on us, ornot much. Whereas, the mere fragment of you and yourwords, even at second hand, and however imperfectly reported,amaze and possess every man and woman andmake them confess that they ought not to live as they do.Your words seem simple when we first hear them,” thegeneral said, “and not worthy or appropriate for their matter,and are even laughed at, because you are always repeatingthe same thing, in the same words. But when we lookwithin those words,” the general said to that other philosopher,his friend, “We find that they are the only words thathave a meaning in them, abounding in fair images of virtueand of the widest comprehension, or rather extending tothe whole duty of a good and honorable man.” Thus didAlcibiades praise Socrates, Mortimer, and thus do I praiseyou. Your words, simple, direct, and clear, still tell us weought not to live as we do and describe the whole duty of agood and honorable man.I will not end with Plato, who, although he may havestarted Mortimer on the road to philosophy, did not accompanyhim for long. Mortimer would refute me is I didnot mention his nearly lifelong admiration for Plato’s famouspupil. Many times he told me, as I imagine he toldyou, that he hoped to meet Aristotle in the afterlife, so hecorrect his errors—and also have the opportunity to talkabout all the most important things with a man who knew,as Mortimer did, what they were and why they were important.Mortimer and I agreed, when St. Christopher was struckfrom the list of proper saints, that the action, althoughprobably correct, was a pity. I myself have stubbornly per5sisted in addressing the benevolent giant every day of mylife. You know the gentle, little prayer:St. Christopher be my guide,In my most need,Go by my side.I have modified it in various ways over the years, and I offeryou another modification now:St. Christopher, be Mortimer’s guide,and Aristotle’s too,In their most need.If they are wandering in somedark, cold, and lonely placeand cannot find one another,Bring them together,Join their hands,Shed warmth and light upon them.Go by their sideAnd from time to time,Let Thomas Aquinas come for lunch.Mortimer, we miss you, and we need your help. We all pursuehappiness, but we do not know what it is or how tofind it. We need you to remind us that happiness is not amoment of ecstasy or a feeling of contentment that cancome and go. Instead, happiness is the product of a wholelife—a life lived in accordance with the two kinds of virtue:intellectual and moral. We have to use our minds and notwaste them. And we have to acquire the habit of desiringthe right things, the things we really need and are good forus, not the wrong things, which are bad for us and for everybodyelse. In addition to all that, we need to be lucky—inour country, in our friends, and in our loves. You werelucky in all these, dear friend, and therefore we can concludethat yours was a happy life. It is our great loss, notyours, that it had to end.

I spent something over thirty years with The EncyclopædiaBritannica, and, of course, in that time I met manyvery intelligent, very smart, very well-read intellectualsand people generally. Unfortunately, I fell into none ofthose categories. So, when I first knew that I was going tomeet Mortimer Adler, back in London in the early Sixties, Iwas decidedly nervous. In fact, the feeling I really had wasone of great awe. I spent all my time trying to talk in sentencesas short as possible, so that he would not work outquite what a nitwit was running the London company. Butwe got on really quite well, and Mortimer, of course, as always,was charming. Here was a man who had not just readbut had written more books—and was still writing at thatstage—than a lot of people have read in their lives. Now,that’s not Britannica people, of course, because we had allbeen weaned on How to Read a Book, and Mortimer hadmade sure we all read the great books of the Westernworld, to keep up with it. Consequently, I had quite a lot tobe nervous about.But I am not going to talk about what Mortimer achieved,and what he did. I am sure the others who follow me willdo that much better than I can. But I would like to talk alittle while about a Mortimer that I knew. In the early Seventies,after I had relocated to the United States, at one ofBritannica’s international functions in Hawaii—we alwayschose the best places to have our functions—sin attackedme. In the course of an afternoon session, when I shouldhave been working with everybody else, I snuck out of themeeting because there was the allure of a great and wonderfulice-cream parlor. And I went down to the ice-creamparlor, and I crept in very quietly to make sure there wasnobody there. And it was empty—except in the far cornerthere was one very large ice-cream and chocolate concoc-tion, out from behind which came a wonderful, very large,ear-splitting grin on this wonderful, elfin-like face. And thatwas when I met the other Mortimer.As the years passed, Mortimer and I managed to commit allsorts of terrible sins of gluttony, in all sorts of differentparts of the world, in ice-cream parlors and candy shopsand places like that. And what I came to find out was thatbehind this austere intellectual facade was a fun-loving, excitable,and very happy, life-loving little boy. This was thelittle boy who, after having some problems in his youthwith swimming, at an age when most people had given upswimming, succumbed to the challenge of a great marathonswimming match at another Britannica meeting. He agreedthat he would do this, and he not only took on this challenge,but he won it in great style and was triumphant.(Now I must point out that the pool he swam in was approximatelyfifteen feet long, and it was not more thanthree feet deep, and there were at least twenty people readyto jump in to save him if anything happened). At the end ofthe course there was a bottle of champagne for the winner,and that, of course, was the sort of incentive that Mortimeralways liked.This was the Mortimer who not only liked to joke butcould take a joke when it was aimed at him. This was theMortimer who could walk with crowds and talk with kings,and, although I cannot talk about his virtue, I can absolutelyguaranty that he never lost that common touch, thatcommon touch that made so many people love him, andwhy so many people are here today who miss him. I shallmiss my young friend. But I have one remaining regret. Ihave no doubt that, at this particular moment, Mortimerand his God are in very deep discussions, which I wouldlove to be able to hear. I only hope that God is up to it.

Happy man! Thanks to Max Weissmann of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas

* Mortimer J. Adler dropped out of school at the age of fourteen (14).

Saturday, June 27, 2009

1968 Police Veteran and Group Spokesperson Sgt. Claudell 'Clubber' Lange (CPD ret.) detailed the detaining of Billionaire Candy-Maker and Progressive Activist Willy Wonka as he attempted to lure eternally ten year old Charlie Bucket into a psychedelically painted VW-Minibus a few feet from the Re-Union 1968 Chicago Police veterans.

Said Lange, "this little white boy banged on the hall where the re-union was taking place screaming that a middle-aged old white guy - a hippie - wanted to take him to forever where the boy would once again see his missing friends. When the boy confronted the pervert, whom we restrained with professional courtesy and Mid-western welcome until CPD officers could make their way through the tens of 20-something Protesters and Death Row Alumni. I wrote down and recorded their exchange for the States Attorney - it went something like this:

Willy Wonka: My dear boy, I promise you they'll be quite all right. When they leave here, they'll be completely restored to their normal, terrible old selves. But maybe they'll be a little bit wiser for the wear. Anyway, don't worry about them.

Willy Wonka: I don't understand it. The children are disappearing like rabbits. Well, we still have each other. Shall we press on?

At that point, we took citizens action and restrained the gentleman, who said that he was there only to protest the brutality of all police - not just CPD. He then started singing -

Willy Wonka: [singsong] There's no earthly way of knowing / Which direction we are going / There's no knowing where we're rowing / Or which way the river's flowing / Is it raining? / Is it snowing? / Is a hurricane a-blowing? / [apprehensive, now spoken]

Willy Wonka: Not a speck of light is showing / So the danger must be growing / Are the fires of hell a-glowing? / Is the grisly reaper mowing? / Yes! The danger must be growing / [yelling] Willy Wonka: For the rowers keep on rowing / And they're certainly not showing / Any signs that they are slowing!

Wonka was taken into custody by Chicago Police and bonded out this morning. His court date is set for a year of total enchantment. This Wonka will be out in no time. Some reporter from WonkaVision taped the whole thing, but they'll slice and dice it so the Perv walks.

whalen wrote: Boo hoo, Steve. The Neanderthals lost the elections in 2008, remember? Pardon our dust as we rush past the Cro-Magnon years to enact much-belated initiatives before it is too late for all of us!

Well, Whalen - the last time Progressives had such a 'Pardon Our Dust' victory was the advent of Prohibition. From 1919 until its Repeal, America was set-back on its heels, Whalen.

Sorry, I can be prickly . . .Whalen , or as some Progressive might opine. without the adverbial ending there. With John Dewey*-esque devotion to 'inquiry' over fact, a Progressive Whalen responded to Chicago Sun Times columnist Steve Huntley - The Last Man Standing - over his revelatory column on Progressive Force-feeding of the Government Goose.

John Dewey is the father of radical progressive thought in America and the beauty who's views on education slaughtered Public Education**. Let it be pointed out -Oh, do - that John Dewey established a Lab School for the elites, while the unwashed masses could serve as lab-rats in an educational philosophy that pushed Public Education to eliminate the guts of education.

The study of how the American Government ( local,state and federal) has all but vanished; the canon of American Literature and British Literature has been diluted to a watery and sugary and under-nourishing swill; that for the Dewey Public Schools "inquiry" is the ethic - child should do as opposed to learn and they do not learn. With each new Hegelian/Marxist doctoral thesis comes a further murder of thought and history.

For Dewey and Progressives 'Inquiry' upon which an a priori goal - Gay Studies, Identity Politics in general, Group Thought is achieved and put in place. If you do not know a Concordat from a Magna Carta, a Peace of Wesphalia from a Piece of the Pie, then it is a fair chance that you are Public School Alum of the last forty years.

In that case,let's take this slowly - John Dewey was a philospher of education, society, and psycholgy at the University of Chicago, who was heavily influeced by the German thinker Hegel. who is actually the granddaddy of Marxist thought. John Dewey believed that 'inquiry' is the most important thing in life so long as the outcomes agree with that inquiry. Thus, if we inquire into poverty as rooted in Racism; all poverty results from racism. If failure results from poverty. racism caused failure & etc. Progressive inquiry arrives at a Pre-Determined outcome.

Gay Marriage is good; all opposition to Gay Marriage is evil; Gay Marriage is good.

Take a look at the Media which offers a "Let's Look at Race Relations!" series.

The outcome is fixed - Systemic Racism, Imperialism, Class ism is always the conclusion. Whites are always bad and people of color are always good. Hence, no Race Crime can be committed by a person of color. Why? Don't matter just is and that is Dewey. Dewey Agree!

Dewey had clout ( Roger Baldwin, Jane Addams, Emma Goldman,I.F.Stone W.E.B. DuBois & etc.). Radical Progressive clout saw Dewey's Philosophy as a burglar bar with which to loot American History and geld American Education. Inquiry is not method it is a goal in Dewey Education.

Steve Huntley represents a mind-set that is valued by most Americans. The old Benthamite view of 'the most good for the most people.' Common Sense.

In Steve Huntley's June 26, 2009, he outlines the Progressive Agenda and the force feeding by the Democratic Leadership in the Congress at the direction of President Obama's White House:

Congress, driven by President Obama's ambitious political agenda, is out to be a jack of all trades. Just look at its to-do list for this year -- health-care reform, clean energy legislation, overhaul of financial regulation, a rewrite of immigration law, stimulus spending to prod the economy toward recovery. Whew! And with six months left in 2009, who knows what else might be added?

That list doesn't include such major business as considering a new U.S. Supreme Court nominee or a host of less sweeping but still significant bills, like a just-passed measure giving an overburdened Food and Drug Administration the duty of regulating tobacco. . . .With Democrats in total control of the House and close to it in the Senate, fierce partisanship, long-cherished liberal goals and the pent-up energy of the Democratic left are driving the transformational agenda. There's no argument many of the bills address problems needing a fix, but that's best achieved with at least a degree of bipartisan support. Yet we're being force-fed a liberal prescription. A crowded agenda controlled by Democrats and a White House push for quick action crowd out competing views.

Regrettably, the major national media have been compliant. For example, this week ABC News offered an hour in prime time for Obama to monopolize the national discussion on health care.

Yet polls consistently show public discomfort with the implications of greater government control of medical services, worry about the costs and a high-level of satisfaction with their current health care among the majority with insurance. Recent news reminds us a public insurance option would open a new avenue for abuse of the taxpayer. Republican Rep. Peter Roskam of the northwest suburbs has started a "medi-fraud blog" tracking corruption and waste in Medicare and Medicaid. His latest entries note that in just the last week prosecutors broke up schemes in Detroit and Miami to defraud Medicare of $150 million.

Another issue is energy. Some of us think the emphasis should be more on energy security than green goals. Yes, we all want a cleaner planet, but our national security and economic future require the exploitation of abundant fossil fuels such as domestic coal and offshore oil as well as expansion of nuclear energy while we develop solar, wind and geothermal for the long term.

Similarly, the economic meltdown naturally leads to new regulation. Yet remember the Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed in 2002, after the accounting scandals, saddled business with expensive and complex regulations making U.S. enterprises less competitive.

The focus on regulation ignores government's role in the housing collapse. The Wall Street Journal reports Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who encouraged the mortgage excesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is at it again, urging the agencies to lower lending standards for condo buyers. Sounds like another dose of the easy credit that wrecked home values.

Obama and Democrats insist Congress works for the good of America in taking on so many projects. But the jack of all trades, as you may recall, is the master of none. Is that how you want the future of your health care or energy supply to be determined?

Columnist Steve Huntley, investigative journalist Tim Novak and Pultizer Prize winning cartoonist Jack Higgins maintain some semblance of thoughtful inquiry for Chicago, because they know that inquiry is not a goal upon which people are forced to agree.

Winning an election is only the beginning of government. The end of government is the preservation of the American Republic. Democrats and Republicans have been doing just that, until these last few months, it seems to me. Dewey has replaced the Founders Fathers for the Progressives. For now.

History has a way of Repealing itself!

*

Dewey is “attractive to those how are more impressed by our new control over natural forces than by the limitations to which that control is subject,” finding that Dewey’s philosophy “is in harmony with the age of industrialism and collective enterprise.” But it is Dewey’s underlying hubris that Russell singles out as “the greatest danger in our time” because “it is increasing the danger of a vast social disaster,” however unintentionally.

Russell’s fears, at least in part, have been realized. There are many who would, without hesitation, describe public education, in combination with other social, economic and political forces, a “vast social disaster.” There are, of course, many more that disagree.

I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling, and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. Through the responses which others make to his own activities he comes to know what these mean in social terms. The value which they have is reflected back into them. For instance, through the response which is made to the child's instinctive babblings the child comes to know what those babblings mean; they are transformed into articulate language and thus the child is introduced into the consolidated wealth of ideas and emotions which are now summed up in language.

I believe that this educational process has two sides-one psychological and one sociological; and that neither can be subordinated to the other or neglected without evil results following. Of these two sides, the psychological is the basis. The child's own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education. Save as the efforts of the educator connect with some activity which the child is carrying on of his own initiative independent of the educator, education becomes reduced to a pressure from without. It may, indeed, give certain external results, but cannot truly be called educative. Without insight into the psychological structure and activities of the individual, the educative process will, therefore, be haphazard and arbitrary. If it chances to coincide with the child's activity it will get a leverage; if it does not, it will result in friction, or disintegration, or arrest of the child nature. . . I believe that the community's duty to education is, therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move. ( emphasis my own)

I believe that when society once recognizes the possibilities in this direction, and the obligations which these possibilities impose, it is impossible to conceive of the resources of time, attention, and money which will be put at the disposal of the educator.

I believe that it is the business of every one interested in education to insist upon the school as the primary and most effective interest of social progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize what the school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of endowing the educator with sufficient equipment properly to perform his task.

Friday, June 26, 2009

This is a full text of Ben Stein's Last column Monday Nights at Mortons a glimpse at celebrity lifestyles in Hollywood.

Ben Stein, like my pals Mike Houlihan, Tom Roeser, Elias Crim, Steve Rhodes, John Powers and Max Weismann, is a Renaissance Man. Mr. Stein is a film maker, comic, wit, economist, professor and political analyst. More importantly, Mr. Stein is a Mensch* - a human being to the backbone! Read this fine analysis of fame, fortune and fraility.

Huge Hat Tip to Leo Hero - Robert Hylard ( Leo '44):

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonlineFINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordinance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad .

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer co mfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York . I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.By Ben Stein

* "Reason in man is rather like God in the world."- St. Thomas Aquinas

Thursday, June 25, 2009

This is the reality of Kennedy Park. The Southtown Star smears us - all of us and lies about it.

The Southtown Star is a Hate Rag.

The Southtown Star is an agenda driven propaganda piece that was once a great community newspaper.

Last year, when Sun Times News Group cashiered every good veteran editor and staff reporter like Courtney Greve, John Hector, and Ed Koziarski, it ceased to exist.

The Southtown Star wanted to be more than a refrigerator magnet paper. It is - it is a disgrace.

Two intangible events took place over the last two weeks in the 19th Ward of Chicago - a black woman in Mount Greenwood found hateful words painted on the garage she rents and Swastikas were painted on the Chicago Park District Property at Kennedy Park in Morgan Park,

Here is the broad brush of hate painted by the Progressive editors and staff of the new Southtown Star:

June 24, 2009

THE ISSUE: Racist graffiti on the garage of a black Mount Greenwood resident sullies the whole community's reputation, once again.

WE SAY: Stand up for what is right, Mount Greenwood residents. Reject racist behavior loudly and publicly.

F or years, the community of Mount Greenwood on Chicago's Southwest Side has bristled at suggestions its residents foster racist attitudes. We're supposed to overlook incidents like last week's "Go home nigger" message spray-painted on the garage of Latricia Deanes' rented Mount Greenwood home. Deanes, who is black, is living there with her three children until repairs to her Beverly home are completed.

We're supposed to downplay it. Child's play. Those goofy kids - perhaps the same ones who spray-painted Nazi symbols on a Dumpster at nearby Kennedy Park.

Well, we aren't going to dismiss it.

Beverly is about two miles east of Mount Greenwood. They are two neighborhoods in Chicago's 19th Ward separated by a few railroad tracks and a cemetery. On a rudimentary, geographic level, Mount Greenwood and Beverly are next door to one another. So where, exactly, was Deanes supposed to "go home?" She is home, whether she's renting a house with her children in Mount Greenwood or living under a newly repaired roof down the street in Beverly. How nice of her neighbors to make her feel welcome.

Geography aside, incidents like this and the dismissive attitude of residents toward them make Mount Greenwood an embarrassment. The "bad apples," as Deanes described the culprits who committed this crime, wipe a stain over the entire community, and everyone else seems to keep their mouths shut.

Mount Greenwood, if you're tired of the bullying and the racism, speak up. Too often, silence only codifies community acceptance of this type of garbage. We know many Mount Greenwood residents feel the same outrage we do. Where are they?

Where are the elected officials? Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart lives in Mount Greenwood. So do labor leaders and police officials. Ald. Ginger Rugai (19th) represents Mount Greenwood, as do state officials Rep. Kevin Joyce (D-Chicago) and Sen. Edward Maloney, and at the federal level, Congressman Dan Lipinski. Where are they?

When Ryan Rush, a white teenager, was violently attacked by black teen-agers July 2007 at Beverly Park in what some believed was a hate crime, we vilified the vicious, unprovoked attack. We supported tough sentences for Micah Eastman and his two accomplices. What's wrong is wrong. (Emphasis my own)

This is wrong, too.

But too often, what we hear at the newspaper after stories like this appear are ignorant attempts at justification: Black people deserve what they get because they commit more crimes. Such-a nd-such high school used to be nice until black kids started going there. Black towns are no longer safe because of their racial make-up. Somehow Deanes deserved this. And on and on. Just read the online comments at the end of Steve Metsch's Saturday story about the graffiti.

To blame one resident for problems elsewhere, based solely on the color of her skin, is a ridiculous, misguided and shameful response. Whoever did this was evil. Period.

Our job at the newspaper is to highlight the good in the communities we cover and to hold those accountable who do us harm. It's our role to look out for the little guy.

Clearly, Deanes deserves defending here, not the criminals. There's just no way around it. There is no justification - none - for what they did. The harm this crime did, and will do, to Deanes' children is serious and far-reaching.

We are ashamed.

You are shameless liars! Here is what you wrote:

Editorial : Attack on youth is a tragedy, but no reason for overreaction ( Emphasis my own)

THE ISSUE: A 14-year-old youth was beaten in broad daylight in a Beverly park in what police are investigating as a hate crime. WE SAY: We hope leaders and residents in the Beverly community and the Southland as a whole can respond without resorting to generalizations and put the incident in proper perspective. The Beverly community is one of the few neighborhoods in Chicago that have achieved a significant level of racial diversity with a minimum of racial tension.

A white boy nearly dies in a beat down from the hands of black kids, but the Southtown Star scolded the whole community to respond without resorting to generalizations .

They (STNG)reserve that right for themselves. This community needs be a vehicle for the agenda to force public officials to tell their neighbors and constituents that they are all racists - everyone.

Two properties got painted and the Southtown Star bloated a Group Race Hate smear on the community it purports to serve and then lies about it- Our job at the newspaper is to highlight the good in the communities we cover and to hold those accountable who do us harm. It's our role to look out for the little guy.

Choke on it.

The Southtown Star serves only its agenda. The Southtown Star like the Chicago Sun Times needs controversy to make a go of it. Boycott these rags. Make them pay for that agenda so important that the truth matters not with their own money. Use your money for your kids and their friends -black, white, or whatever.

The ISSUE: The Southtown Star is a Hate RagWE SAY: Let it go bankrupt and soon!

Terry Sullivan Trio will grace the stage of Gallery Cabaret in Bucktown on June 29th from 8-10:30PM. Get a start on your Summer with the vocal stylings of Ms. Terry Sullivan and Great American Song Book!

Ms. Sullivan is accompanied by two of Chicago's best Jazz Artists - pianist Tom Hope and Bass Man Brian Sandstrom.

Tom Hope, Jazz pianist, was born and raised in Houston, studied music at North Texas State U., and was a U. S. Army bandsman. He lived and worked in Los Angeles in the 70's and is a Chicagoan since 1976. An

experienced accompanist, he has a repertoire of thousands of tunes in all keys, with an emphasis on the Great American Songbook.

Tom has performed with Barrett Deems, Arnett Cobb, Scott Hamilton, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Ira Sullivan, Ken Peplowski, Ed Polcer, Red Holloway, Lee Castle, Richie Cole, Al Grey, Britt Woodman and Charlie Persip, as well as singers such as Jaye P. Morgan and the Four Freshmen. He is also an accomplished singer and a student of the guitar.

Tom offers jazz vocal coaching in the context of the Great American Songbook. This involves learning the real melodies and rhythms of the songs, choosing tempos on the basis of lyrical sense and swing, then allowing one's natural style to develop. This leads to liberation from copying other performers' personal interpretations.

Brian Sandstrom - "One of the busiest bass players working in the Chicago area." Chicago Tribune.

The Gallery Cabaret has been operating in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood since 1990. According to owner, Ken Strandberg, the Gallery Cabaret harkens back to a time when "you could walk into a joint, buy a drink, and enjoy live entertainment like comedy or music just for being there and being a patron." The Gallery has offered free entertainment 7 nites per week since it opened. Over time, many up and comers have graced the stage, like The Smashing Pumpkins, Urge Overkill, Material Issue and Liz Phair (while they were still up and comers!). The Gallery has also hosted numerous comedy acts and poetry readings and slams. Every month, local artists have their work on display at the Gallery. Currently, we also offer cable TV including your favorite sports, until prior to showtime, and early bird drink specials from 5:00 pm until 9:00 pm. We also have Darts and Golden Tee Golf. Can't wait for music to start? We have TouchTunes internet jukebox with access to 1000's of songs.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The National Coalition to Stop the War was a multi-faced coalition - nay a Rainbow -of essentially the very same dweebs and victims ( Yppies, Diggers, SDS, Al Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, The Seven! et al. ) playing at tough guy and being fully surprised by the similar outcomes incumbent upon playing the fool.

"My Gawd, How can you say that, Hickey? You unfeeling Nazi .......but, They were sooooo Committed!!!"

I dunno. Just do.

The 1968 Democratic Convention has spawned more 'committed participants who were there, Man' than even Woodstock. Belying the fact that far fewer than 6,000 showed up in Grant Park.

The same Dweeb/Victims got a rump-thumping from Italian young men, the 69th Street Loafers, some days prior to the Convention and again by Chicago Police Officers.

Later, the same knuckleheads with rich Mommies and Daddies went all commitment in Old Town ( the Days of Rage) and a year later when rioters tore up Balboa when Sly Stone failed to show up at the Grant Park Band shell.

After that . . .the commitment seemed to die. The Theatre continued through the 1970's with the Trial of the Seven and the rest is . . .ludicrous.

Don Rose brought Happy Days back this week. Progressives get more mileage out of nothing - why does this great Nation have an energy crisis with all the methane fired out by Dweebs and Victims yet.

Whine on, Oh Happy Worriers!

For the line dancing I have chosen a very swell and little played ditty by an Arc-Greaser! Eddie Cochran!

Georgia Arms is the 5th largest retailer of .223 Ammo in America . They sell 9mm, .45, ..223 ammunition. They normally buy spent brass from the US Department of Defense. Spent brass is "one time used" shell cases used by our Military for training purposes. They buy the brass, recondition it, and then reload the brass for resale to Law Enforcement, Gun Clubs, Gun Shops, and stores like Wal-Mart. They normally buy 30,000 lbs of spent brass at a time. This week the DoD wrote a letter to the owner of Georgia Arms and informed him that from now on the DoD will be destroying the spent brass, shredding it. It will no longer be available to the ammo makers, unless they buy it in a scrap shredded condition (which they have no use for). The shredded brass is now going to be sold by the DoD to China as scrap metal, after the DoD pays for it to be shredded.. The DoD is selling the brass to China for less money than the ammo makers have been paying, plus the DoD has to pay to have the brass shredded and do the accounting paperwork. This sure helps the economy now doesn't it? Sell cheaper to China , and do not sell at all to a proven US business. Any hidden agenda working here? Obama going after the Firearms Industry and our ammunition!! The Georgia Arms owner even related a story that one of his competitors had already purchased a load of brass last week. The DoD contacted him this week and said they were sending someone over to make sure it was destroyed. Shell cases he had already bought! The brass has no value to the ammo maker if it is destroyed/shredded/melted. The ammo manufacturer only uses the empty brass cases to reload different calibers, mainly 223 bullets. The owner of Georgia Arms says that he will have to lay off at least half of his 60 workers, within 2-3 months if the DoD will no longer sell spent brass cases to the industry. Georgia Arms has 2-3 months of inventory to use, by summer they're out. If the Reloading Industry has to purchase new manufacture brass cases, then the cost of ammunition will double or even triple, plus Obama want to add a 500% tax on each shell.

A Coalition of Old Greaser Gangs is Settin' a Meet-up with Don Rose and his Aging Cupcakes!

Cadillac Commie with Bad Buckers 'PROVOKES' an Illinois National Guardsman-not Dick Butkus for this Dental Challenged but Earnest Revolutionary.

You say want a Coalition, well You know . . .

Here they come - from all over, by over there, near the tracks and the viaducts, where the streetcar turns the bend around.

THE REBELS: 47th Street and Ashland;63RD STREET IMPERIALS; 63rd STREET BEER CLUB;V's: They hung around behind Gage Park High School. 69th STREET LOAFERS: Mostly Italian from 69th and Hermitage:DUKES OF HERMITAGE. Hung around Hermitage Park and 59th and Hermitage:SAWYER BOYS: They hung at Sawyer school at 53rd and Sawyer;WHIPPLE STREET BOYS;ARTESIAN COBRAS: (a greaser gang who evolved from the 59 Street Supreme rulers, and most of whom were weightlifting fanatics) issued a statement concerning the call by Food Critic, Public Relations Maven and Later-day Kropotkin Don Rose to protest a planned reunion of septuagenarian and octogenarian Chicago Police Veterans in celebration of their Service and Protection of Chicago during the attempted coup by Cadillac Commie Cupcakes at the Democratic Convention:

From ABC Seven ( Andy Shaw Free Since 2008)-

June 23, 2009 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- A police watchdog group says it will march in protest of a planned reunion of Chicago officers who worked during the 1968 Democratic convention. The Chicago convention was marked by protests and violence. The group Chicago Copwatch says the planned reunion celebrates police violence against demonstrators. They plan to march this Friday, June 26, - the same day of the scheduled Chicago riot police reunion. They also delivered a letter to the mayor's office asking him to condemn the reunion. "These were unprovoked assaults by the police on several occasions in Grant Park, on Michigan Avenue," said Don Rose, activist. "The Chicago Police Department, the City of Chicago, broke the laws they were obligated to uphold," said Patricia Hill, African American Police League.

Chicago Greaser and Street-corner Guy* Coalition Spokesguy Niti Capone, III had this to say, " These Fruits came around the park over by the viaduct on Ashland and tried to get Vinny, Me and the Three Parisi Brothers to come downtown and help them toss 7-Up bottles of Pee and Irish Confetti at the Bulls, but we done that already and there was 16" Ball-game at Sherman Park with Slinky Ryan from Wood Streets and those Micks what live south of the tracks, across from Our Lady A Mount Carmel and all go to Leo, but their sissies what go to Big Weed (Little Flower H.S.), like this skinny little turd name Hickey who goes to all our dances and ain't too much of a damn pest, because he's tight with Tony DiPolito and the Vasi Brothers. We go to Harper and Hubbard and Parker, but we go to Church and all.

So, this Fruit** in the Dickie and Tweed and Beatle Boots says that they gonna bring Revolution! We start yankin' his pud! Then he gets his panty-hose bloated and cracks wise and Larry with the three fingers from Murray Park gives him a crack because Larry's brother is in Vietnam fightin' the Chinese Reds.

The Fruit near pee'd his cords - wearin' cords in July - and cries, 'We're Your Brothers! Off The Pigs!' and Larry gives him another crack. Then the other Fruits in the Volkswagon, we all drive Chevies, and its gots these plastic wallpaper flowers for Peace, start bawling so we swarm them and take a tire iron to the hood, which is the trunk of those Fag Wagons. We're all frisky on Sneaky Pete's ( Tall Schlitz with Ripple Red poured in) and got the giggles over these Room 222 Fags. We toss our lit Luckies into the Hitler Bug and they all start cryin' like little bitches.

We crack the bunch of them and they're all cryin' about 'callin' the Cops' and We yell back -'Off The Pigs! Dude!' The Cops from Englewood always treated us Okay and Mr. Pape was a cop and his cousin ran the Little League. So we called a bunch of the guys that we used to bloody up in the parks and at the parties and Parish dances - the Polacks, Harps, Hunkies, Mex-es and Ricans - all great guys. I was in the Army for two years with a couple of Polack Gaylords from Back o' the Yards and two Psychos from Canaryville - lovely gents.

If you see that Mick runt Hickey, let him know that my cousin Emil ain't forgotten that he cut-in on a slow dance at VIZ with Trolly Manuppa and he still ain't real happy. You ain't that Hickey are you? Jesus, you was in shape what happened? Just kidding. No, really? Don't do pull-ups anymore?

Anyway, we called the old guys to come out and support the Old Cops. The Fruits are still fruits and hate America.

Yeah, we made some calls we'll be there to help the Old Time Coppers."

Click my post title for Chicago Stone Greasers - splendid historical record - no Kidding! The Photos for the south side gangs are the work of Chicago Historian and Photag Mr. Larry Raeder who grew up in the Sherman Park Hood. Mr. Rader has been an invaluable source of knowledge for Crime Biographer Rose Keefe and Historian Richard Lindberg.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Washington Post correspondent Howard Kurtz does a splendid job of presenting Rahm Emmanuel the Chief of Staff for President Obama, as man who knows how to put Media Bacon on the President's table.

When Mr. Emanuel goes to market every little piggy gets looked over, but le treatment royale is reserved for the sucklings who play on conservative or independent high ground - notably David Brooks.

David Brooks does not do much for me, as a writer, much less as an original thinker. He reminds me of a kid who grew up playing with Major League baseball cards, but never went to the prairie between the two-flats for pick-up rules baseball. Now, he goes to swap-shows for memorabilia and shows the disinterested citizens of America all the swell stuff he got. " Hey, that's nice Dave. Look, I gotta go."

Rahm Emanuel eyed this little piggy for the platter early on the game. Howard Kurz notes:

Conservative critics also got the Rahm treatment. After Michael Kelly, then the New Republic's editor, called Clinton a "shocking liar," Emanuel took him to lunch. Emanuel called Times columnist William Safire "Uncle Bill" and had him over for dinner, despite his having called Hillary Clinton a "congenital liar."

Against this backdrop, Emanuel's courtship of Brooks, a conservative who has at times been sympathetic to Obama, is hardly surprising. In March, after Brooks wrote that Obama had turned out to be another big-spending liberal, he found himself talking to Emanuel, two other top officials and the president, which produced a follow-up column crediting the White House with making a "sophisticated and fact-based" case.

Brooks says he had a half-dozen dinners with Emanuel during his congressional days and now considers him a policy maven as well as political tactician. "He's comfortable with journalists," Brooks says. "He provides real information without giving too much away. With some people you just get the spin; he does go beyond that."

Rahm Emanuel never drew a stupid breath in his life. Hell, it's easy to 'get comfortable with journalists,' Dave! It is, "Come For the Table, Newsies! Here, Newsies,Newsies! Soo-Weeeeeee!" And the Porcine Parade prances to dinner!

He feeds you apples and sugar. You provide the feast! Bon Appetite, Mr. President!

Remember newspapers,folks? Now, they are used to wrap up the fat, the bones, the snout and the ears.

Monday, June 22, 2009

I had a most memorable Father's Day Dinner with Ms. Terry Sullivan; Susan and Steve Jordan of Oak Park; historian, editor and executive network operator Elias Crim and his three beautiful and talented daughters at the landmark Bohemian restaurant Klas in Cicero, IL.

Klas is a family operated restaurant that is a museum of Czech Culture and a delight of Old World service and atmosphere. Klas* is " the largest Czech Restaurant in the U.S.A. and a reminder of Chicago's debt to Bohemian people who brought skilled craftsmanship to the building trades and examples of personal and family thrift as an ethic - too long ignored.

The first Czech in Chicago is reported to have arrived before 1850:

Jan Habenicht in his Czech publication Dejiny Cechüv americkych (History of American Czechs) published in Si. Louis in 1910, categorically wrote that the first Czech settler in Chicago was a Moravian native Dr. Frantisek Adolf Valenta. This claim was generally accepted even by such eminent scholars as Professor Francis Dvornik.

Dr. Frantisek A. Valenta originally came to America in 1849 and, after a brief stay in New York City, he settled in August of the same year on the north side of Chicago. Later on he established a pharmacy on the corner of State and Van Buren Streets. His knowledge of German enabled him to practice medicine especially among Germans. After fourteen years of medical practice, he was quite rich and returned to Bohemia, reportedly with some $50,000. There he purchased a farm and in 1870 he died. Habenicht harshly criticized Valenta's German orientation, however, if we look at it from a different perspective, we ought to give him credit for his entrepreneurship and be comforted by the fact that his presumed riches did not come from the back of poor Czech settlers.

Chicago's Czech immigrants possessed few locally marketable skills, and in the 1880s, working at unsteady jobs, notably as lumber shovers in the “lumber district” adjoining Pilsen, they earned less than nearly all other major ethnic group in the city. Eschewing traditional craft unions, they readily employed the mass strike to better their economic situation, drawing on their dense associational network. Whole neighborhoods joined to keep out strikebreakers, playing a prominent part in street fighting with police and militia in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and other labor conflicts. The event that precipitated the Haymarket tragedy was a violent clash between heavily Bohemian lumber shovers and the police. Led by socialist-leaning freethinkers, Bohemians turned readily to the Socialist Labor Party at the end of the nineteenth century. By the 1910s and 1920s, however, Czechs earned more and worked at a wider range of occupations, including as operatives at Western Electric. Their energies were devoted more to ethnic and neighborhood organizations than to radical or unionist activity.

Early Czech immigrants largely voted for the Republican Party because of their opposition to slavery. However, Chicago Czechs changed their allegiance in local politics after the Democratic Party nominated a Czech for alderman in 1883. Czech support for the Democrats continued well into the twentieth century, peaking with the election of Anton Cermak, a Czech immigrant, as the Democratic mayor of Chicago in 1931.

Klas is located on the street named for Chicago's best known Bohemian - Anton Cermak.

Terry, the Jordan's and the Crims had attended Mass and a play at St. Odilo's Catholic Church, while I had spent a few hours wishing my Dad a Happy Father's Day - "Hell, yes it's Happy - for Crissake, I'm still on top of the grass!"

I dropped my girls off at home and took Cicero Ave. up to Cermak Road and West eight blocks to the massive Klas and and quaffed samples the fine 'Shirley Temples' in the masterfully carved deep dark wooden bar festooned with carved statuary, memorabilia and Bohemian/Moravian Welcome!

The Jordans arrived and so also the beautiful and elegant Ms. Sullivan and Crims of Valparaiso, Indiana!

Steve Jordan is Boston-born banker who was raised Irish Catholic in San Francisco and his beautiful wife Susan is an native San Franciscan. Steve Jordan spent many years in South East Asia - Singapore primarily - and is man with wealth of historical knowledge and eclectic discernment's on all manner of cultural interests - governmental as well as gastronomical.

Steve pointed out the photos of Czech soldiers in Czarist Russian winter gear and identified them as members of the famous Czech Legion (Česká družina). 'These were giants!, remarked the talented Mr. Jordan. "The Czech Legion fought an epic battle against the Red Armies all along the Trans-Siberian Railroad route from Asia to Europe and yet very few people have ever heard of them. They fought an epic paralleled only by the Anabasis of Xenophon and Chosin Reservoir of Chesty Puller - God I love this place! You get a real sense of history here!"

Chicago film-maker Bruce Bendinger has made a film about the Czech Legion - The Accidental Army, which opened here in Chicago on June 20th at the Gene Siskel Center.

Ed Koziarki of Chicago Reader has written a splendid piece about this film and Chicago's debt to the Czechs of Chicago - here is an excerpt of Ed's review:

“Here was a story that almost nobody knows,” Bendinger says. “You pull a thread and the more you pull, the more interesting it got. Even in the Czech and Slovak republics, it’s become a historical blind spot.”

The Chicago connection goes back to 1902, when local plumbing magnate Charles Crane recruited Tomáš Masaryk, a philosophy professor and Czech nationalist who’d served in the Austro-Hungarian parliament, to lecture at the University of Chicago. (A memorial to Masaryk and the Czechoslovak Legion now stands on campus, at the east end of the Midway Plaisance). The Slavs of Central Europe had no state of their own at the time: most Czechs and Slovaks were subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while a sizable minority lived in Russia. Nearly 100,000 Czechs had immigrated to Chicago, giving the city the world’s second-highest Czech population after Prague.

After his summer stint at the U. of C., Masaryk returned to Austro-Hungary and resumed his political activities. When the empire invaded Serbia in 1914, initiating World War I, he fled to England, becoming leader of an Allied spy network and the foremost international spokesman for the Czechoslovak independence movement.

On the day the war broke out, thousands of Chicago Slavs gathered in Pilsen Park at 26th and Albany—in Little Village, then called Czech California—to urge the United States to join the Allied effort against Austro-Hungary and the Central Powers. They launched a letter-writing campaign aimed at getting their relatives in Europe to resist conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army, or to desert and fight for the Allies. “The letters [showed] how people were feeling,” Bendinger says. “Thousands of [Slavic] Austro-Hungarian soldiers surrendered as quickly as they could.” Chicago Czechs and other Slavs “were at the forefront of being on the Allied side in World War I. Their relatives were the ones being killed, or being drafted to fight for the Germans and Austro-Hungarians.”

The first Czechoslovak Legion was a force of 10,000 in the Russian army—ostensibly volunteers, though many were pressured to fight under threat of losing their land. Their ranks swelled after Masaryk convinced the Russian government to allow 50,000 Czech and Slovak POWs from the Austro-Hungarian army to defect and fight for Russia. The Czechoslovak Legion is credited with helping to tie up German forces on the Eastern front, giving the Allies a crucial edge on the Western front. Their service, Bendinger says, also gave the Czech independence movement vital “skin in the game.”

In May 1918, Masaryk went on a barnstorming tour of the U.S. to raise political and financial backing for Czech independence. In downtown Chicago, outside the Blackstone Hotel, he addressed a crowd of 150,000 supporters, demonstrating the independence movement’s political muscle and turning American political discourse in favor of a Czechoslovak nation.

(Standing before a statue of Masaryk in Prague on April 5, President Obama said, “Masaryk spoke to a crowd in Chicago that was estimated to be over 100,000. I don’t think I can match Masaryk’s record, but I’m honored to follow his footsteps from Chicago to Prague.”)

Steve Jordan knew the story. Elias Crim knew the story. I had heard about the Czech Legion, but as with most things in my life managed to place that thought in the top drawer of my Brain Dresser - the one that holds treasures; baby teeth, match boxes from memorable places; ear rings lost and stepped upon & etc.

America needs to open that drawer often. We are losing our sense of History. President Obama has a very poor sense of history** and swats at historical facts like so many flies. Jimmy Carter also took a paddle to the rabbit of Historical sense, and allowed an Iranian Revolution that still seems to hold America hostage. That's history, folks! Learn it or live it . . .over and over again.

Too many Americans like to believe the things that they are told to them by ersatz authorities ( Look, Bill Ayers is called an Academic! Have you ever read his nonsense?)- like America is murderous, racist, greedy, opportunistic, Imperialist. Americans like to embrace icons like Margaret Sanger, who was as twisted a Eugenics racist as Hitler on a bad day, yet she is padded with Planned Parenthood coins in the memory slot; that Jane Addams was more than just a self-absorbed and bitter person; that Saul Alinsky really mattered to anyone while he was alive and that he actually improved the lives of the people that he used.

Open your eyes to history. At Klas Restaurant on Cermak Road it is all around you.However it also helps to have interested and interesting people like Jordans and the Crims when enjoying the Goulash.

*Klas Restaurant5734 W Cermak RdCicero, IL 60804(708) 652-0795

**

Days into his presidency, it should be recalled, Mr. Obama had spoken of his desire to restore to America's relation with the Muslim world the respect and mutual interest that had existed 30 or 20 years earlier. It so happened that he was speaking, almost to the day, on the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution -- and that the time span he was referring to, his golden age, covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the American standoff with Libya, the fall of Beirut to the forces of terror, and the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Liberal opinion would have howled had this history been offered by George W. Bush, but Barack Obama was granted a waiver.

Little more than three decades ago, Jimmy Carter, another American president convinced that what had come before him could be annulled and wished away, called on the nation to shed its "inordinate fear of communism," and to put aside its concern with "traditional issues of war and peace" in favor of "new global issues of justice, equity and human rights." We had betrayed our principles in the course of the Cold War, he said, "fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is quenched with water." The Soviet answer to that brave, new world was the invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979.

Mr. Carter would try an atonement in the last year of his presidency. He would pose as a born-again hawk. It was too late in the hour for such redemption. It would take another standard-bearer, Ronald Reagan, to see that great struggle to victory.

Iran's ordeal and its ways shattered the Carter presidency. President Obama's Persian tutorial has just begun.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

"He was chosen by the eternal Father as the trustworthy guardian and protector of his greatest treasures, namely, his divine Son and Mary, Joseph’s wife. He carried out this vocation with complete fidelity until at last God called him, saying: ‘Good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord’” (St. Bernardine of Siena).

Just as the saying goes that behind every great man there is a great woman, the inspiration behind the celebration of a Father's Day is owed at least partly to its slightly earlier counterpart, Mother's Day. Mother's Day was just beginning to gather widespread attention in the United States in 1909, when Sonora Louise Smart Dodd, of Spokane, Washington, heard a sermon on the merits of setting aside a day to honor one's mother. It gave her the idea to petition for a day to honor fathers, and in particular, her own father, William Jackson Smart, who had raised her and her five siblings by himself, after her mother died in childbirth.

With support from the Spokane Ministerial Association and the YMCA, her efforts paid off, and on June 19, 1910, the first Father's Day was celebrated in Spokane. The rose was selected as the official Father's Day flower, and some suggest that people wear a white rose to honor a father who is deceased, and a red one for a father who is living. In 1972, Richard Nixon signed a presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father's Day.

I have three wonderful children - Nora, Conor and Clare. Their Mother and my Bride, Mary, is in Heaven. She watches the cartoon playing 24/7 which is my care for those three great kids. Homer Simpson looks like Lord Chesterfield next to my ministrations as Hickey Pater Familias.

I do what I can, or attempt to make myself believe that all that I do for them comes not from a misstep, a lazy half-measure, or out of my personal vanity.

They deserve a great Father. They have one in God the Father and a reasonable facsimile here on earth.

Fathers are important, I guess. There are commercials telling us about Father's Rights from lawyers in Cowboy Hats; Celebration Sales for Hardware, Steaks, Golf Shirts and Old Country Buffets.

A wonderful boss that I had back when I worked one of my many jobs to meet tuition at Loyola was Simon Bitzstein.

Si Blitzstein hired legions of Catholic Youth to sell Van Huesen Shirts, Levis, quality suits, sport coats, and accessories at Mr. Lee's in the Evergreen Plaza*. One Fathers Day while fitting a guy home from the Navy for a suit, Si was asked what he was doing for Father's Day. He said, "This. This is what Fathers do."

Fathers, no matter how strong, weak, smart, flawed, best-intended, or exemplary, are committed to a contact made with the women that they love and the subsequent gift from God that this contact requested.

It's work. We Catholics celebrated Fathers Day long before the thoughtful Methodist Miss Strong, and the subsequent Presidents declared a fitting tribute.

Fulfill the contract.

My Dad, was a three Campaign Marine veteran of the Pacific who worked three jobs. When my Mom was sick, the Old Man cooked,cleaned, washed, dried and folded clothes in between those jobs. Never a word about it.

Si Blitzstein fitted a sailor for a new suit.

St. Joseph raised the Son of God.

That's Fathers.

I pray to be half- the men they are - Fathers.

* Click my post title for the impending demolition of this landmark shopping center.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

President Obama wants to talk. That is what he does and how he became our President.

However, President Obama acted on his words trying to nuance the world. President Obama does not want anti-missile defence systems in Europe or even the United States in order to make his words more compelling to Thugs. The world has some real nasty villains afoot.

These villains are not unlike the drive-by thugs in America's cities who shoot with impunity and murder anyone.

President Obama comes from the Progressive Mind-set that embraces the notion that Guns Kill People. Guns kill people in the very same way that pencils flunk examinations.

Chicago has the strictest Gun Laws in America, but also the highest number of Public School Kids murdered by Thugs with Guns. Those Gun Laws keep academics, suburban dwelling columnists, lawsuit lawyers and community activists off a patch of Mayor Daley's back, but have contributed in making Chicago a Thug Comfort Zone.Black and Hispanic kids die from Thugs throwing shots at them with impunity bordering on immunity.

The world has thugs. North Korea is a Thug Nation. You can not talk to thugs. Thugs can only be interdicted - defended against by Law Enforcement Officers armed with guns and a government with something amounting to a spine.

President Obama told the world that he would rid it of Nuclear Weapons back in April and the North Koreans called President Obama's soaring Rhetoric:

PRAGUE – Just hours after North Korea launched a long-range rocket, President Barack Obama called for "a world without nuclear weapons" and said the United States has a “moral responsibility ” to lead the way, as the only nation ever to use them.

Obama’s speech was long planned as the centerpiece of his first presidential trip overseas, but it gained new urgency after North Korea sent a multi-part rocket soaring over the Sea of Japan early Sunday morning.

North Korea insisted the launch was meant to put a satellite into space but the U.S. and other nations believe Pyongyang is trying to develop the capability to launch a nuclear warhead.

The president, who was woken up just after 4:30 a.m. local time by news of the launch, spoke to the authoritarian state in remarks hastily added to his text.

“Now is the time for a strong international response, and North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons,” Obama said to thousands thronged into the cobblestone square outside the elegant Prague Castle, in what was the largest crowd of his five-country, eight-day swing.

“All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime. And that's why we must stand shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans to change course.”

World Nuke Control? Where only the Thugs have guns - like here in Chicago? Come on!

Guam is America's Asian Strategic Outpost and it is vulnerable to a North Korean missile threat. Guam, as it was before World War II, is always an American afterthought . . .until Thugs attack it. Guam is America, Mr. President. Guam voted for you.

Here are the thoughts of a gent in Virginia who sees the real threat from North Korea is a strike at Guam.

I think that the North Koreans could make a much more dangerous point by launching a long range missile and having it hit a target in the ocean that is exactly 3,404 kilometers away.

3,404 km being the exact distance between Pyongyang and Guam. Guam being the strategic hub of US military operations in the Pacific. Guam is home to roughly a third of our Air Force's aircraft at any given time and a large proportion of our naval assets. Nuking Guam would severely cripple us in the Pacific. Such an attack would be the modern equivalent of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. In pure military terms, hitting Guam now would hurt us more than a hit on Hawaii would.

North Korea is still a ways from being able to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and place it on top of a long range missile. And there is no way that one of their aircraft could get close enough to Guam's airspace to bomb it. But just putting a missile down at exactly that distance would make the point that they are approaching the ability to strategically attack the US in something beyond an asymmetrical manner. Posted by Jack Landers at Friday, June 19, 2009

It is with this diverse group of tradesmen, nurses, civil servants and venture capitalists that my insights to the economic, cultural, social and religious impact upon Patriots and Neighbors and their families is incubated and hatched - prematurely and full term.

We are blessed with such people as these. They have America's back.

Gino Ford services all of us with ComEd and is the vanguard warrior who returns electrical power to all of us.

ComEd is a bete noir with most of us helots - rate hikes and obscure billing protocols developed by sneaky bean counters and protected by some Legislators in Springfield - most notably the former leader of the Illinois Senate Emil Jones.

However, the crews who venture up on the high wires face injury and death ever day and most especially when our planet goes Gangster on us - Ice Storms and Hurricano Downpours- like yesterday.

Gino missed coffee, because he is out with the crews. Gino is sweating up a storm in heavy jacket asbestos gloves, helmet and harness with tens of pounds of gear pulling him to earth along with the buffeting winds and pelts of rain.

Yesterday evening when I travelled north to pick up the beautiful and talented Ms. Terry Sullivan for evening at Joe Segal's Jazz Showcase to witness the electric performance of Jazz Diva Dee Dee Bridgewater* and her quintet, I counted more than twenty huge ComEd Utility and Cherry -Picker Rigs heading north in the express lanes of the Dan Ryan.

That was Gino and the Lads. They are still at it.

Here is the high power and exotic Ms. Dee Dee Bridgewater singing Sweet Rain for Gino and the Com Ed Helots - the High Wire and Pole Artistes! God Bless you all and watch over your labors!

Thanks!

Chicago's Dept. of Streets and San says the storms that ripped thru the city downed 350 trees and put out more than 60 traffic lights. 450+ basements have flooded and more than 500 streets have been made impassable by the runoff.Spokesman Matt Smith says the department will work through the night to get things back to normal.Com Ed crews are out in force in the Southwest suburbs. Tonight's round of storms knocked out powerline and downed trees.No serious injuries were reported but it will some time before communities recover. About 36-thousand of the 120-thousand power outages are located in the South suburbs.

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Dad always said that I couldn't find my butt with both hands. I can. Allow me to add this imperative -“Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you." - Pope Francis to celebrate Pro-life Mass, Vatican

About Me

A peach of a guy with all the sweetness one could expect from a life well-spent and in good company: short on brains but a terrific dancer!
Author:
Every Heart and Hand: A Leo High School Story
The Chorito Hog Leg, Book One: A Novel of Guam in Time of War